Remember back when Republicans considered the filibuster to be pure evil? Whenever Democratic politicians used it, say, to block the umpteenth attempt to nominate the same extremist hardcore right-wing nutballs into high court positions, the Republicans, furious that they could only get 95% of their nominees forced through the Senate, screamed bloody murder and threatened to outlaw the filibuster altogether with what they called the “nuclear option” (sorry, the “constitutional option”)?

Yeah, Republicans despise the filibuster. Not just because it was used to deny them total and absolute dominance, of course–they loathed the filibuster in principle, and made a big thing of it. After all, the filibuster denied a straight up-or-down vote! What were those sneaky, underhanded Democrats up to, if they were so chicken as to not want a simple, apple-pie American procedure like a straight up-or-down vote! Those weasels!

I mean, if Republicans ever lost their majority in the Senate, they would never resort to such a nasty, underhanded, un-American, pinko commie… uh… err….

Okay, sarcasm off.

You of course by now have used your incredible psychic powers of clairvoyance to determine that–yes, you guessed it–Republicans in the Senate wasted no time at all in resorting to using the filibuster, and from their speed in adopting the tactic, are likely to start using it far more often than Democrats used to. Which is fine: that’s how things are supposed to work. Better the government be hog-tied than to allow one party to run wild. Democrats didn’t use it enough when they were in the minority; now you can expect Republicans, despite their former hatred of the procedure on principles, to go nuts with it.

Democrats don’t like it and will complain, but they’re not going to go “nuclear” over it; it’s the Republicans who are the hypocrites here.

Already Senate Republicans are using the filibuster to block a straight up-or-down vote on a resolution to oppose Bush’s “Surge™” in Iraq.

Note, however, that the media, at least at this time, is scared gutless of using the “F” word to describe what Republicans are doing. Read the USA Today article I linked to just above, you’ll see that they “blocked” and “sidetracked” the vote, which “was 49-47, or 11 short of the 60 needed to go ahead with debate.” They didn’t even use the word “cloture,” for Christ’s sake. The only mainstream story I could find that used the word “filibuster” to describe the Iraq War resolution vote was US News & World Report. Everybody else I could find used words like “block” or “stop“–and neither representative article mentions the “F” word anywhere.

Meanwhile, Republicans in the Senate used a version of the filibuster in committee to stop a bill designed to make it easier to form unions (how horrible! America has never been about forming unions! That’s commie talk!), and while the press did use the “F” word then, it was only in forms like “rare filibuster” and “mini filibuster.”

So, Republicans are being rank hypocrites and the media is too weak-kneed to even come close to calling them on it. Looks like business as usual.